A day after arresting Teesta Setalvad, Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) handed her over to the Ahmedabad Crime Branch for her involvement in a new case of forgery, criminal conspiracy, and insulting criminal proceedings to cause injury. After bringing Setalvad to Ahmedabad early this morning, Deputy Commissioner of Police, (DCP), Crime Division, IPS Chaitanya Mandlik, held a press conference and took questions from the press.
The Gujarat ATS detained social activist, Setalvad in Mumbai on Saturday from her Juhu home. She was then taken to the Santacruz police station for an FIR filed against her at the Ahmedabad crime brancḥ. Crime branch inspector D B Barad, while lodging the complaint, accused her and two former IPS officers of forgery, criminal conspiracy, and instigating criminal proceedings to cause injury, among others.
Furthermore, Setalvad, who is the secretary of NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace, has also been accused of conspiring to fabricate facts and documents, tutor witnesses, and abuse the process of law by making up false evidence to frame people.
The action came just hours after Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in an interview with a news agency, alleged that Setalvad gave police false information about the 2002 Gujarat riots.
On Friday, The Supreme Court dismissed a challenge brought by Zakia Ehsan Jafri that contested the SIT’s closure report and threw out claims of a bigger plot involving high-ranking officials and other parties in the Gujarat riots of 2002, which followed the Godhra train massacre.
Setalvad and her NGO were co-petitioners with Zakia Jafri in the petition filed against Modi and others in the apex court. Jafri’s husband, a former Congress MP, Ehsan Jafri was killed during the riots.
